Only the Vietnam era protests match the size and breadth of
the movement unleashed by the election of Donald Trump. One point of
comparison: The massive march and rally against the Vietnam War in 1969 was the
largest political demonstration in American history until the even more massive
Women’s March in January.

All around us we can see signs that
the movement has only just begun. Consider, for instance, that a large
percentage of those in the Women’s March engaged in their
very first street protest. Or that thousands of protesters
spontaneously flocked to airports to challenge the anti-Muslim ban. Or that
hundreds of citizens have confronted their local congressional representatives
at their offices and town hall meetings about the potential repeal of Obamacare
and other Trump/Republican policies.

As activists prepare for future
demonstrations, many are rightfully concerned about the potential disruptions
by those using Black Bloc tactics, which involve engaging in
property destruction and physical attacks on police and others. They
often appear at demonstrations dressed in black and cover their faces to
disguise their identities. Their numbers have been relatively small to date.
But they garner an outsized amount of media coverage, such as a violent protest
in Berkeley to block an appearance by an alt-right provocateur or the punching
of a white nationalist during Trump’s inauguration. The result is that an
otherwise peaceful demonstration’s primary message can get lost in a fog of
rock throwing and tear gas. Even worse, fewer people are
likely to turn up at future protests, and potential allies get turned off.

This is not a new phenomenon. Gandhi and Martin Luther King,
Jr. confronted this issue. So did those of us active in the struggle against
the Vietnam War. I played a major role in organizing the national antiwar
demonstrations between 1967 and 1971, as well as dozens of smaller actions
during that time. Today’s protest organizers and participants can learn much
from our experiences on the frontlines a half century ago.

A good place to start is to consider the Weathermen, the
most prominent of the counterparts to the Black Bloc in our day. As proponents
of violent street tactics, the Weathermen capitalized on an aspect of the ‘60s
counterculture that glorified violent revolution. Posters displaying
romanticized images of Che Guevara, Viet Cong soldiers (especially women
fighters) and Black Panthers with guns were plastered on many walls.

The Weathermen didn’t just spout revolutionary rhetoric. One
of their most memorable actions was what they proclaimed as the “Days of Rage.”
They urged people to join them in Chicago in early October 1969 to “Bring the
War Home.” They recruited extensively among white working-class youths to come
to the city with helmets and such weapons as clubs, prepared to vandalize
businesses and cars as well as assault police. They believed their action would
help provoke an uprising against the capitalist state.

During the “Days of Rage,” the Weathermen did not attach
themselves to a larger peaceful demonstration. They were on their own. So, the
action provides a great case study about the feasibility of violent street
tactics.

For starters, they discovered that it was hard to find
recruits for their violent street army. Only about 300 people showed up despite
months of effort. And they found it harder to enlist support for their actions
even among those who were friendly with them politically. In fact, Fred
Hampton, the leader of the Black Panther Party in Chicago, publicly denounced
the group’s action, fearing it would turn off potential allies and lead to
intensified police repression. “We believe that the Weathermen action is
anarchistic, opportunistic, individualistic, chauvinistic and Custeristic
[referring to General George Custer’s suicidal Last Stand]. It’s child’s play.
It’s folly.”

It would not be overstating the case to say that the “Days
of Rage” was a flop. They did trash some stores and engage in fights with
police. But Chicago police easily contained their violence and rounded up
virtually all of the militants and charged them with stiff crimes. Some
suffered serious injuries, and several were shot by police (none fatally). The
Weathermen soon gave up on violent street protests, became the Weather
Underground and confined themselves to symbolic bombings of such targets as
police stations and a bathroom in the U.S. Capitol.

In short, the “Days of Rage” shows the ineffectiveness of
violent street tactics unless combined with a larger peaceful protest. The
Black Bloc anarchists understand this reality, too. They need us as a cover for
their actions. Put another way: We don’t need them, but they need us. So, the
primary way to deal with those who advocate violent tactics is to isolate them,
do everything possible to separate them from the peaceful demonstration. That
was one of our goals in 1969 when organizing the November 15 antiwar march on
Washington, D.C.

As organizers, we knew that it was not enough to stop
potential disrupters. We knew we had to make sure that the demonstration itself
would channel people’s indignation with the war more creatively than yet
another conventional march and rally. People take to the streets because they
are upset, angry or disillusioned. They want to express their outrage as
powerfully as possible. Although some people prefer disruption for its own
sake, almost everyone else wants to deliver their message so that it leads to
positive social change, not make matters worse.

We adopted a tactic first used by a group of Quakers the
previous summer. To personalize the war’s impact, that group read the names of
the American soldiers killed in Vietnam from the steps of the Capitol. Their
weekly civil disobedience action received a lot of media attention,
particularly after some members of Congress joined them. Before long, peace
groups throughout the land were reading the names of the war dead in their town
squares and other public spaces.

For our demonstration in Washington,
we planned what we called the “March Against Death.” Here is how Time magazine
described it at the time: “Disciplined in organization,
friendly in mood, [the march] started at Arlington National Cemetery, went past
the front of the White House and on to the west side of the Capitol. Walking
single file and grouped by states, the protesters carried devotional candles
and 24-in. by 8-in. cardboard signs, each bearing the name of a man killed in
action or a Vietnamese village destroyed by the war. The candles flickering in
the wind, the funereal rolling of drums, the hush over most of the line of
march — but above all, the endless recitation of names of dead servicemen and
gutted villages as each marcher passed the White House — were impressive
drama.”

First in line was the widow of a fallen serviceman, followed
by 45,000 marchers (the number of Americans killed in the war to that date).
After walking the four-mile route, the marchers reached the Capitol, where they
placed their placards in coffins. The march began the evening of November 13
and went on for 36 hours. No one who was there would ever forget. It also set
the tone for the massive march and rally.

While the “March Against Death” was taking place, we were
busily training marshals who would oversee the demonstration — that is,
essentially be our own force of nonviolent peacekeepers. We were rightfully
concerned that groups of Weathermen-style protesters would disrupt our demonstration
regardless of how creative our tactics were. The Chicago action had taken place
only a month earlier, and we knew that there were many individuals and small
groups for whom the appeal of violent street tactics had not diminished.

With the help of several churches that provided us with
spaces, we recruited trainers, many with previous experience in nonviolent
training. After giving an overview of the march’s objectives and logistics, we
had the trainees do several role-playing exercises. For instance, we had a
scenario where a group of Weathermen-style protesters tried to disrupt the
march by trying to get people to join them in more “militant” actions. One
tactic we suggested was to get the marchers to sing the then-popular John
Lennon tune “Give Peace A Chance” to divert attention from the disrupters.
Another was to get the marshals to link their arms to separate the disrupters
from the rest of the marchers.

At the end of the two-hour-long session, the newly trained
marshals were given a white armband and told where to meet the next day. We
trained more than 4,000 marshals who were deployed along the entire route of
the march. The armbands were an important symbol to help us isolate would-be
disrupters.

Although there were a few incidents
after the rally had broken up, they did not detract from the powerful message
that the half-million war opponents in Washington conveyed to the public and
the nation’s leaders. The war didn’t end the next day, or even the next year,
but the peace
movement played a major role in stopping it — something that
was unprecedented in American history.

Not everyone was pleased with our marshals. In Clara
Bingham’s interview of Weathermen leader Bill Ayers for her recently published
book, “Witness to the Revolution,” Ayers said: “…the problem with the mass
mobilizations at that time was that the militants — us — were always contained.
We were pushed aside by peace marshals and demonstration marshals.”

The man in the White House also did
not like the peaceful character of our actions. In “Nixonland,” historian Rick Perlstein tells
a story that indicates what kind of protest Richard Nixon would have preferred:
“A briefing paper came to the president’s desk in the middle of March [1969]
instructing him to expect increased violence on college campuses that spring.
‘Good!’ he wrote across the face.”

This anecdote points out another significant lesson from the
Vietnam era. Governments invariably welcome violent protests. With soldiers,
police and huge arsenals of weapons, they know how to deal with any form of
violence. They also infiltrate protest groups with provocateurs to stir up
violence — something we experienced repeatedly then and is certainly happening
today. The Black Bloc is especially vulnerable to infiltration because of their
anonymity. And, as we learned then, those in power will willfully
mischaracterize peaceful demonstrators as violent to help turn those in the
middle against us.

We can only imagine what this man would do if given any
excuse to fully deploy the forces of violent repression against us. Nor can we
forget that this man has shown a willingness, if not eagerness, to encourage
his gun-toting supporters to turn on his opponents.

The movement must keep its focus on the issues. We must not
allow ourselves to get distracted. Too many lives are threatened by Trump’s
reckless rhetoric and heartless policies. We can succeed, just as we did in
stopping the Vietnam War. It will take time, but we can create a more just and
peaceful society. It starts with us.

About the author

Robert Levering worked as full-time anti-Vietnam
war organizer with groups such as AFSC, the New Mobilization Committee and Peoples
Coalition for Peace and Justice. He is currently working on a book entitled
"Resistance and the Vietnam War: The Nonviolent Movement that Crippled the
Draft, Thwarted the War Effort While Helping Topple Two Presidents," along
with an associated documentary film.

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